though not the art of the poet. Diderot not only did not write comedy in
such a style; but he does not even so much as show consciousness that
any difference exists between one kind of prose and another. The blurred
phrases and clipped sentences of what Diderot would have called Nature,
that is to say of real life, are intolerable on the stage. Even he felt
this, for his characters, though their dialogue is without wit or
finish, are still dull and tame of speech, in a different way from that
in which the people whom we may meet are dull and tame. There is an art
of a kind, though of an extremely vapid kind.

Again, though he may be right in contending that there is a serious kind
of comedy as distinct from that gay comedy which is neighbour to
farce--of this we shall see more presently--yet he is certainly wrong
in believing that we can willingly endure five acts of serious comedy
without a single relieving passage of humour. Contrast of character,
where all the characters are realistic and common, is not enough. We
crave contrast in the dramatic point of view. We seek occasional change
of key. That serious comedy should move a sympathetic tear is reasonable
enough; but it is hard to find that it grudges us a single smile. The
result of Diderot's method is that the spectator or the reader speedily
feels that what he has before him substitutes for dramatic fulness and
variety the flat monotony of a homily or a tract. It would be hard to
show that there is no true comedy without laughter--Terence's _Hecyra_,
for instance--but Diderot certainly overlooked what Lessing and most
other critics saw so clearly, that laughter rightly stirred is one of
the most powerful agencies in directing the moral sympathies of the
audience,--the very end that Diderot most anxiously sought.

It is mere waste of time to bestow serious criticism on Diderot's two
plays, or on the various sketches, outlines, and fragments of scenes
with which he amused his very slight dramatic faculty. If we wish to
study the masterpieces of French comedy in the eighteenth century, we
shall promptly shut up the volumes of Diderot, and turn to the ease and
soft gracefulness of Marivaux's _Game of Love and Chance_, to the
forcible and concentrated sententiousness of Piron's _Metromanie_, to
the salt and racy flavour of Le Sage's _Turcaret_. Gresset, again, and
Destouches wrote at least two comedies that were really fit for the
stage, and may be read with pleasur